STEP: STudent Ecumenical Partnership

A Normal Heart

James Darnell A year ago the production selection committee of the School of Theatre at Illinois State University was not sure that they wanted to produce Larry Kramer's The Normal Heart. Kramer's play a thinly veiled autobiographical piece about activists' struggle to get the government and media to address the AIDS pandemic, was one of the very first plays to confront the problem of AIDS in 1985. The committee was not sure that the play, which brims with anger over the government's initial refusal to fund HIV/AIDS research and HIV/AIDS-related medical services, was still relevant. The committee came to the rather logical conclusion, that yes, it was still relevant 21 years later and The Normal Heart opened recently.

When I was a senior in high school I researched the topic of AIDS in the theatre. The Normal Heart was one of the core pieces of HIV/AIDS-related literature that I surveyed. Never since, in my theatrical education these past four years, has a play so impacted me.

Larry Kramer, who is now 70 years old and HIV-positive, is an Academy Award-nominated screenwriter, novelist, playwright, and activist. In the 1970's he was very much on the periphery of the gay rights movement. But in 1981 gay and bisexual men began to contract diseases rare in young men. These opportunistic infections combined together totally debilitated immune systems. The medical community was baffled about how this could happen…and about why most of the people who were dying were gay and bisexual men.

These men were the colleagues and friends of Larry Kramer. As more and more people he knew became ill, he became more alarmed. Eventually he and some friends organized a grassroots organization known today as Gay Men's Health Crisis. Kramer would later also found the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP). This is the story that The Normal Heart tells.

Ned Weeks serves as Larry Kramer's alter ego, a writer bitterly angry about the complicity of the Reagan and Koch (then mayor of New York City) administrations. The organization struggles to get support, but finally builds a core of hundreds of volunteers who provide services for those with the disease originally known as GRID (gay-related immuno-deficiency). Weeks is influenced by Dr. Emma Bruckner (based on Dr. Linda Laubenstein), one of the few people who did medical research on the disease early on, to speak out to the gay community, urging men to stop having unsafe sex. But the organization consistently refused to take strong stands after a decade of fighting for the right to make love without guilt or punishment. All the while, Ned must care for his partner who has contracted the disease.

Recently, a professor commented on the fact that the generation of gay and bi men currently in college lack strong positive role models of similar sexual orientation. In all cultures and communities we learn from those who have gone before us, but for gay and bi males in their teens and twenties, most of the men who could have taught us are dead. Of the activists involved in the early struggle to combat HIV/AIDS, Larry Kramer is one of the few remaining. The lives lost represent millions of elder brothers who could have led the way, and taught young men how to accept and love themselves through all the hatred and rejection that GLBT people endure daily. At the end of The Normal Heart, the scrim of the stage is lifted and reveals the names of all the people that Ned/Larry knew who died of HIV/AIDS. As I was moved to tears, I remembered my elder brothers and fathers.

Plymouth Congregational United Church of Christ in Des Moines, Iowa is one of the largest congregations in the UCC, and the largest open and affirming congregation in the denomination. And the people of Plymouth take this commitment seriously. Members of the GLBT community come from all around the Central Iowa area to participate in the life of Plymouth UCC. It is a vibrant and vital place--and a sacred space of affirmation, hope, and welcome.

When I arrived at Plymouth in June of 2003 to serve as a summer intern I was coming from a more conservative UCC church. Plymouth was the first ONA church I had contact with-and how lucky I was. There is a group of gay and bi men who every Sunday after church do brunch together. We're always expected at the Drake Diner, this group of warm and funny men. That summer as I began to get to know these men they really became my elder brothers and fathers. Most of them are around the ages of my parents, and while we have fun joking and tossing around witty repartee, I know I sit in the presence of those men who have fought the same battles I fight and I have much to learn from them. They struggled through far more discrimination than I ever will. It is because of their sacrifice that I as a bisexual man have the rights and freedoms that I do.

How they were able to endure the hatred and become the amazing, self-respecting, compassionate teachers that they are, I do not know. I also have no idea how they escaped the wrath of the pandemic that surely stole away many of their friends, brothers, and partners. But I thank God that they did.

I thank God for Ron, a retired schoolteacher who helps young men accept and love themselves as they are. I thank God for Ken, a former American Baptist minister, for his gift of humor that lightens the spirit. I thank God especially for Joe, a doctor who works specifically with GLBT health, who has been a friend, guide, and constant supporter. I indeed thank God that they like Larry Kramer spoke out, fought the hegemony that tried to silence them, and fight still. I thank God for our little brunch group that through tides of laughter and serious conversation teaches me so much about being whole in the face of adversity.

AIDS quilt at General Synod These men take the UCC's God is Still Speaking campaign to heart. We have known in separate, but all too familiar ways what being bounced by the church has meant. For me I get emotional often thinking about the welcome that the United Church of Christ has provided us. Who could have thought in 1972 when Bill Johnson was ordained, or in 1981 when the HIV/AIDS pandemic began, that years later there would be over 600 churches like Plymouth safe enough for GLBT folks to simply be themselves? Though so many of our sacred teachers have succumbed to the virus, there are yet elder brothers and sisters willing to take the hands of those young GLBT people who are scared, do not have a sense of self worth, and cannot imagine being welcomed into the church. But, certainly that group of men at Plymouth is teaching young people like me their worth as children of God. They instill in us the thought that indeed Jesus didn't turn anyone away, but welcomed all. And surely they make sure that we know that "no matter who you are, or where you are on life's journey, you're welcome here." The words sound simple, but they have taken us a long time to say. For many it may not seem like much, but as one who has known and deeply felt alienation from the church, those words fill my heart with joy every time I hear them.

It is a large mantle that those men from Plymouth and straight allies such as Plymouth senior minister David Ruhe and his seminary classmate, President John Thomas, will pass on to me someday. But I hope that the generation of today's young adults will be able to stand strong and loudly proclaim the extravagant welcome to, as the UCC Statement of Faith says, "accept the cost and joy of discipleship, to be your servants in the service of others." That call is not an easy one, to proclaim to a world of -isms and phobias that our God is a God of boundary-less love that binds together in covenant "faithful people of all ages, tongues and races" promising to all who trust in God "forgiveness of sins and fullness of grace, courage in the struggle for justice and peace, presence in trial and rejoicing, and eternal life in God's realm which has no end."

Sadly, The Normal Heart is all too relevant today. The HIV/AIDS pandemic, while rates are down in the U.S., will explode in Asia in the next decade if a widely distributable cure is not found soon. Our government acts as if HIV/AIDS is no longer a problem here, and young men have returned to the behaviors that caused AIDS in the first place. It seems the Western world has returned to the complicity of the 1980's. We must hear the voices of our elder brothers, and listen to the pain of their loss. When one hears that pain and anger, one must fight for research, funding, prevention and care services in HIV/AIDS matters. If we do not, our generation will be the next generation lost. Our wisdom and our guidance for future sons and daughters will be lost as well. We must "act up, fight back, fight AIDS" as says the rallying call of Kramer's ACT UP.

James Darnell is a member of the Student Ecumenical Partnership (STEP) Leadership Team and is a member of New Church United Church of Christ in Peoria, Illinois.



		A Normal Heart A year ago the production selection committee of the School of Theatre at Illinois State University was not sure that they wanted to produce Larry Kramer's The Normal Heart. Kramer's play a thinly veiled autobiographical piece about activists' struggle to get the government and media to address the AIDS pandemic, was one of the very first plays to confront the problem of AIDS in 1985. The committee was not sure that the play, which brims with anger over the government's initial refusal to fund HIV/AIDS research and HIV/AIDS-related medical services, was still relevant. The committee came to the rather logical conclusion, that yes, it was still relevant 21 years later and The Normal Heart opened recently. When I was a senior in high school I researched the topic of AIDS in the theatre. The Normal Heart was one of the core pieces of HIV/AIDS-related literature that I surveyed. Never since, in my theatrical education these past four years, has a play so impacted me. Larry Kramer, who is now 70 years old and HIV-positive, is an Academy Award-nominated screenwriter, novelist, playwright, and activist. In the 1970's he was very much on the periphery of the gay rights movement. But in 1981 gay and bisexual men began to contract diseases rare in young men. These opportunistic infections combined together totally debilitated immune systems. The medical community was baffled about how this could happen…and about why most of the people who were dying were gay and bisexual men. These men were the colleagues and friends of Larry Kramer. As more and more people he knew became ill, he became more alarmed. Eventually he and some friends organized a grassroots organization known today as Gay Men's Health Crisis. Kramer would later also found the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP). This is the story that The Normal Heart tells. Ned Weeks serves as Larry Kramer's alter ego, a writer bitterly angry about the complicity of the Reagan and Koch (then mayor of New York City) administrations. The organization struggles to get support, but finally builds a core of hundreds of volunteers who provide services for those with the disease originally known as GRID (gay-related immuno-deficiency). Weeks is influenced by Dr. Emma Bruckner (based on Dr. Linda Laubenstein), one of the few people who did medical research on the disease early on, to speak out to the gay community, urging men to stop having unsafe sex. But the organization consistently refused to take strong stands after a decade of fighting for the right to make love without guilt or punishment. All the while, Ned must care for his partner who has contracted the disease. Recently, a professor commented on the fact that the generation of gay and bi men currently in college lack strong positive role models of similar sexual orientation. In all cultures and communities we learn from those who have gone before us, but for gay and bi males in their teens and twenties, most of the men who could have taught us are dead. Of the activists involved in the early struggle to combat HIV/AIDS, Larry Kramer is one of the few remaining. The lives lost represent millions of elder brothers who could have led the way, and taught young men how to accept and love themselves through all the hatred and rejection that GLBT people endure daily. At the end of The Normal Heart, the scrim of the stage is lifted and reveals the names of all the people that Ned/Larry knew who died of HIV/AIDS. As I was moved to tears, I remembered my elder brothers and fathers. Plymouth Congregational United Church of Christ in Des Moines, Iowa is one of the largest congregations in the UCC, and the largest open and affirming congregation in the denomination. And the people of Plymouth take this commitment seriously. Members of the GLBT community come from all around the Central Iowa area to participate in the life of Plymouth UCC. It is a vibrant and vital place--and a sacred space of affirmation, hope, and welcome. When I arrived at Plymouth in June of 2003 to serve as a summer intern I was coming from a more conservative UCC church. Plymouth was the first ONA church I had contact with-and how lucky I was. There is a group of gay and bi men who every Sunday after church do brunch together. We're always expected at the Drake Diner, this group of warm and funny men. That summer as I began to get to know these men they really became my elder brothers and fathers. Most of them are around the ages of my parents, and while we have fun joking and tossing around witty repartee, I know I sit in the presence of those men who have fought the same battles I fight and I have much to learn from them. They struggled through far more discrimination than I ever will. It is because of their sacrifice that I as a bisexual man have the rights and freedoms that I do. How they were able to endure the hatred and become the amazing, self-respecting, compassionate teachers that they are, I do not know. I also have no idea how they escaped the wrath of the pandemic that surely stole away many of their friends, brothers, and partners. But I thank God that they did. I thank God for Ron, a retired schoolteacher who helps young men accept and love themselves as they are. I thank God for Ken, a former American Baptist minister, for his gift of humor that lightens the spirit. I thank God especially for Joe, a doctor who works specifically with GLBT health, who has been a friend, guide, and constant supporter. I indeed thank God that they like Larry Kramer spoke out, fought the hegemony that tried to silence them, and fight still. I thank God for our little brunch group that through tides of laughter and serious conversation teaches me so much about being whole in the face of adversity. These men take the UCC's God is Still Speaking campaign to heart. We have known in separate, but all too familiar ways what being bounced by the church has meant. For me I get emotional often thinking about the welcome that the United Church of Christ has provided us. Who could have thought in 1972 when Bill Johnson was ordained, or in 1981 when the HIV/AIDS pandemic began, that years later there would be over 600 churches like Plymouth safe enough for GLBT folks to simply be themselves? Though so many of our sacred teachers have succumbed to the virus, there are yet elder brothers and sisters willing to take the hands of those young GLBT people who are scared, do not have a sense of self worth, and cannot imagine being welcomed into the church. But, certainly that group of men at Plymouth is teaching young people like me their worth as children of God. They instill in us the thought that indeed Jesus didn't turn anyone away, but welcomed all. And surely they make sure that we know that "no matter who you are, or where you are on life's journey, you're welcome here." The words sound simple, but they have taken us a long time to say. For many it may not seem like much, but as one who has known and deeply felt alienation from the church, those words fill my heart with joy every time I hear them. It is a large mantle that those men from Plymouth and straight allies such as Plymouth senior minister David Ruhe and his seminary classmate, President John Thomas, will pass on to me someday. But I hope that the generation of today's young adults will be able to stand strong and loudly proclaim the extravagant welcome to, as the UCC Statement of Faith says, "accept the cost and joy of discipleship, to be your servants in the service of others." That call is not an easy one, to proclaim to a world of -isms and phobias that our God is a God of boundary-less love that binds together in covenant "faithful people of all ages, tongues and races" promising to all who trust in God "forgiveness of sins and fullness of grace, courage in the struggle for justice and peace, presence in trial and rejoicing, and eternal life in God's realm which has no end." Sadly, The Normal Heart is all too relevant today. The HIV/AIDS pandemic, while rates are down in the U.S., will explode in Asia in the next decade if a widely distributable cure is not found soon. Our government acts as if HIV/AIDS is no longer a problem here, and young men have returned to the behaviors that caused AIDS in the first place. It seems the Western world has returned to the complicity of the 1980's. We must hear the voices of our elder brothers, and listen to the pain of their loss. When one hears that pain and anger, one must fight for research, funding, prevention and care services in HIV/AIDS matters. If we do not, our generation will be the next generation lost. Our wisdom and our guidance for future sons and daughters will be lost as well. We must "act up, fight back, fight AIDS" as says the rallying call of Kramer's ACT UP. James Darnell is a member of the Student Ecumenical Partnership (STEP) Leadership Team and is a member of New Church United Church of Christ in Peoria, Illinois.